Almuric - Robert E. Howard (trending books to read TXT) 📗
- Author: Robert E. Howard
- Performer: -
Book online «Almuric - Robert E. Howard (trending books to read TXT) 📗». Author Robert E. Howard
rest of our women.”
“You mean all the women look like her, and all the men look like
you?”
“Certainly—allowing for their individual characteristics. Is it
otherwise among your people? That is, if you are not a solitary
freak.”
“Well, I’ll be—” I began in bewilderment, when another warrior
appeared in the door, saying.
“I’m to relieve you, Thab. The warriors
have decide to leave the matter to Khossuth when he returns on the
morrow.”
Thab departed and the other seated himself on the bench. I made no
attempt to talk to him. My head was swimming with the contradictory
phenomena I had heard and observed, and I felt the need of sleep. I
soon sank into dreamless slumber.
Doubtless my wits were still addled from the battering I had
received. Otherwise I would have snapped awake when I felt something
touch my hair. As it was, I woke only partly. From under drooping lids
I glimpsed, as in a dream, a girlish face bent close to mine, dark
eyes wide with frightened fascination, red lips parted. The fragrance
of her foamy black hair was in my nostrils. She timidly touched my
face, then drew back with a quick soft intake of breath, as if
frightened by her action. The guard snored on the bench. The torch had
burned to a stub that cast a weird dull glow over the chamber.
Outside, the moon had set. This much I vaguely realized before I sank
back into slumber again, to be haunted by a dim beautiful face that
shimmered through my dreams.
I Awoke Again in the cold gray light of dawn, at a time when the
condemned meet their executioners. A group of men stood over me, and
one I knew was Khossuth the Skullsplitter.
He was taller than most, and leaner—almost gaunt in comparison to
the others. This circumstance made his broad shoulders seem abnormally
huge. His face and body were seamed with old scars. He was very dark,
and apparently old; an impressive and terrible image of somber
savagery.
He stood looking down at me, fingering the hilt of his great sword.
His gaze was gloomy and detached.
“They say you claim to have beaten Logar of Thurga in open fight,”
he said at last, and his voice was cavernous and ghostly in a manner I
cannot describe.
I did not reply, but lay staring up at him, partly in fascination at
his strange and menacing appearance, partly in the anger that seemed
generally to be with me during those times.
“Why do you not answer?” he rumbled.
“Because I’m weary of being called a liar,” I snarled.
“Why did you come to Koth?”
“Because I was tired of living alone among wild beasts. I was a
fool. I thought I would find human beings whose company was preferable
to the leopards and baboons. I find I was wrong.”
He tugged his bristling mustaches.
“Men say you fight like a mad leopard. Thab says that you did not
come to the gates as an enemy comes. I love brave men. But what can we
do? If we free you, you will hate us because of what has passed, and
your hate is not lightly to be loosed.”
“Why not take me into the tribe?” I remarked, at random.
He shook his head. “We are not Yagas, to keep slaves.”
“Nor am I a slave,” I grunted. “Let me live among you as an equal. I
will hunt and fight with you. I am as good a man as any of your
warriors.”
At this another pushed past Khossuth. This fellow was bigger than
any I had yet seen in Koth—not taller, but broader, more massive. His
hair was thicker on his limbs, and of a peculiar rusty cast instead of
black.
“That you must prove!” he roared, with an oath. “Loose him,
Khossuth! The warriors have been praising his power until my belly
revolts! Loose him and let us have a grapple!”
“The man is wounded, Ghor,” answered Khossuth.
“Then let him be cared for until his wound is healed,” urged the
warrior eagerly, spreading his arms in a curious grappling gesture.
“His fists are like hammers,” warned another.
“Thak’s devils!” roared Ghor, his eyes glaring, his hairy arms
brandished. “Admit him into the tribe, Khossuth! Let him endure the
test! If he survives—well, by Thak, he’ll be worthy even to be called
a man of Koth!”
“I will go and think upon the matter,” answered Khossuth after a
long deliberation.
That settled the matter for the time being. All trooped out after
him. Thab was last, and at the door he turned and made a gesture which
I took to be one of encouragement. These strange people seemed not
entirely without feelings of pity and friendship.
The day passed uneventfully. Thab did not return. Other warriors
brought me food and drink, and I allowed them to bandage my scalp.
With more human treatment the wild-beast fury in me had been
subordinated to my human reason. But that fury lurked close to the
surface of my soul, ready to blaze into ferocious life at the
slightest encroachment.
I did not see the girl Altha, though I heard light footsteps outside
the chamber several times, whether hers or another’s I could not know.
About nightfall a group of warriors came into the room and announced
that I was to be taken to the council, where Khossuth would listen to
all arguments and decide my fate. I was surprised to learn that
arguments would be presented on my behalf. They got my promise not to
attack them, and loosed me from the chain that bound me to the wall,
but they did not remove the shackles on my wrists and ankles.
I was escorted out of the chamber into a vast hall, lighted by white
fire torches. There were no hangings or furnishings, nor any sort of
ornamentation—just an almost oppressive sense of massive
architecture.
We traversed several halls, all equally huge and windy, with rugged
walls and lofty ceilings, and came at last into a vast circular space,
roofed with a dome. Against the back wall a stone throne stood on a
block-like dais, and on the throne sat old Khossuth in gloomy majesty,
clad in a spotted leopardskin. Before him in a vast three-quarters
circle sat the tribe, the men cross-legged on skins spread on the
stone floor, and behind them the women and children seated on
fur-covered benches.
It was a strange concourse. The contrast was startling between the
hairy males and the slender, white-skinned, dainty women. The men were
clad in loincloths and high-strapped sandals; some had thrown
pantherskins over their massive shoulders. The women were dressed
similar to the girl Altha, whom I saw sitting with the others. They
wore soft sandals or none, and scanty tunics girdled about their
waists. That was all. The difference of the sexes was carried out down
to the smallest babies. The girl children were quiet, dainty and
pretty. The young males looked even more like monkeys than did their
elders.
I was told to take my seat on a block of stone in front and somewhat
to the side of the dais. Sitting among the warriors I saw Ghor,
squirming impatiently as he unconsciously flexed his thick biceps.
As soon as I had taken my seat, the proceedings went forward.
Khossuth simply announced that he would hear the arguments, and
pointed out a man to represent me, at which I was again surprised, but
this apparently was a regular custom among these people. The man
chosen was the lesser chief who had commanded the warriors I had
battled in the cell, and they called him Gutchluk Tigerwrath. He eyed
me venemously as he limped forward with no great enthusiasm, bearing
the marks of our encounter.
He laid his sword and dagger on the dais, and the foremost warriors
did likewise. Then he glared at the rest truculently, and Khossuth
called for arguments to show why Esau Cairn—he made a marvelous
jumble of the pronunciation—should not be taken into the tribe.
Apparently the reasons were legion. Half a dozen warriors sprang up
and began shouting at the top of their voice, while Gutchluk dutifully
strove to answer them. I felt already doomed. But the game was not
played out, or even well begun. At first Gutchluk went at it only
half-heartedly, but opposition heated him to his talk. His eyes
blazed, his jaw jutted, and he began to roar and bellow with the best
of them. From the arguments he presented, or rather thundered, one
would have thought he and I were lifelong friends.
No particular person was designated to protest against me. Everybody
who wished took a hand. And if Gutchluk won over anyone, that person
joined his voice to Gutchluk’s. Already there were men on my side.
Thab’s shout and Ghor’s bellow vied with my attorney’s roar, and soon
others took up my defense.
That debate is impossible for an Earthman to conceive of, without
having witnessed it. It was sheer bedlam, with from three voices to
five hundred voices clamoring at once. How Khossuth sifted any sense
out of it, I cannot even guess. But he brooded somberly above the
tumult, like a grim god over the paltry aspirations of mankind.
There was wisdom in the discarding of weapons. Dispute frequently
became biting, and criticisms of ancestors and personal habits entered
into it. Hands clutched at empty belts and mustaches bristled
belligerently. Occasionally Khossuth lifted his weird voice across the
clamor and restored a semblance of order.
My attempts to follow the arguments were vain. My opponents went
into matters seemingly utterly irrelevant, and were met by rebuttals
just as illogical. Authorities of antiquity were dragged out, to be
refuted by records equally musty.
To further complicate matters, disputants frequently snared
themselves in their own arguments, or forgot which side they were on,
and found themselves raging frenziedly on the other. There seemed no
end to the debate, and no limit to the endurance of the debaters. At
midnight they were still yelling as loudly, and shaking their fists in
one another’s beards as violently as ever.
The women took no part in the arguments.
They began to glide away about midnight, with the children. Finally
only one small figure was left among the benches. It was Altha, who
was following—or trying to follow—the proceedings with a surprising
interest.
I had long since given up the attempt. Gutchluk was holding the
floor valiantly, his veins swelling and his hair and beard bristling
with his exertions. Ghor was actually weeping with rage and begging
Khossuth to let him break a few necks. Oh, that he had lived to see
the men of Koth become adders and snakes, with the hearts of buzzards
and the guts of toads! he bawled, brandishing his huge arms to high
heaven.
It was all a senseless madhouse to me. Finally, in spite of the
clamor, and the fact that my life was being weighed in the balance, I
fell asleep on my block and snored peacefully while the men of Koth
raged and pounded their hairy breasts and bellowed, and the strange
planet of Almuric whirled on its way under the stars that neither knew
nor cared for men, Earthly or otherwise.
It was dawn when Thab shook me awake and shouted in my ear: “We have
won! You enter the tribe, if you’ll wrestle Ghor!”
“I’ll break his back!” I grunted, and went back to sleep again.
So began my life as a man among men on Almuric. I who had begun
Comments (0)